Finished. Riding Mountain Quilt.

Without a doubt, one of the top two parts of quilt making for me is the hand quilting. So I have tended towards quilts with bigger pieces over the last year or so.

Here is the finished Riding Mountain quilt. It measures about 152 x 152 cm. As usual, I have used wool batting. You can't beat wool batting and hand quilting - the drape.

Quilting the Riding Mountain Quilt

As this is a relatively small quilt at just 152 x 152 cm (60 x 60 inches), basting was pretty quick and easy. My house fix area has tiled floors which not only lap up the morning sun, but make basting easier because the masking tape sticks the quilt to the floor and I don't attach the quilt to the carpet!

I don't have a frixion pen at the moment and Warehouse Stationery don't seem to be stocking them anymore, so I went back to an old rolling chalk powder marker and masking tape.

I used all 10 chenille needles at once to create a rat's nest of threads.

So far, so good.

I am using a green dmc perle #8, colour 3345 and Sue Spargo Eleganza perle #8, colour EZ12. I was lucky to have them both in the thread box already. I am now going to start school work for the year and only sew in the afternoons/evenings rather than all day. I struggle re-starting every year. I know that once it starts, it does not stop for 11 months. Once I get going and the learners get back, I do love it. But it is relentless.

Later this morning, the 1980s orange glass at the front door is being replaced. Yay.

Riding Mountain Quilt

During the making of this quilt I discovered that I am useless at following diagrams. If I make this pattern again, I would re-do the diagrams and colour code them with my fabric colours. I did plenty of unpicking!

I also need to remind myself not to use linen no matter how nice it looks in the shop. It is so shifty to cut.

My plan today is to get the top basted so I can start hand quilting it. I am thinking the usual straight-ish lines and some cross hatching. I have decided the quilting is the part of the process I like the most. Well, the most after hand sewing the binding. That is my most, most favourite part of quilt making.

While downloading these photos, I saw these ones I took on Sunday 5 January. I flew back into Auckland from Hawkes Bay around 1pm and by 2pm this was the sky. It got darker and darker, and more and more orange until it cleared early evening. I have never seen anything like it before and it came because of the massive bush fires burning in Australia.